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3D printing TPU
#1
A bunch of friend and I bought a chinese prusa kit in order to learn a bit more about printing, from what i see the printer won't be able to print TPU out of the box.
I was wondering if I can eventually upgrade some parts and be able to print TPU, can you point me in the right direction?
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#2
We have a few really good 3D printer guys on the forum, I am sure one of them will be able to steer you in the right direction. Smile
My youtube channel

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#3
Your printer will need a heated print bed (that can heat to at least 60C), and you will need an extruder that can print at 240C.

If your printer didn't come with a heated bed, you can probably add one pretty easily.  There are many tutorials on this on the net - I recommend watching some of Thomas Sanladerer's how-to videos on Youtube on the topic.

If your extruder won't heat to 240, I recommend getting the E3Dv6, available from the manufacturer at http://e3d-online.com/E3D-v6 (or from Amazon or Filastruder).
[-] The following 1 user Likes sloscotty's post:
  • Oscar
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#4
(10-Jul-2016, 01:54 AM)sloscotty Wrote: Your printer will need a heated print bed (that can heat to at least 60C), and you will need an extruder that can print at 240C.

If your printer didn't come with a heated bed, you can probably add one pretty easily.  There are many tutorials on this on the net - I recommend watching some of Thomas Sanladerer's how-to videos on Youtube on the topic.

If your extruder won't heat to 240, I recommend getting the E3Dv6, available from the manufacturer at http://e3d-online.com/E3D-v6 (or from Amazon or Filastruder).

Brilliant, this was exactly the kind of information I was after, thanks mate!
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#5
(10-Jul-2016, 09:55 AM)TheDude Wrote: Brilliant, this was exactly the kind of information I was after, thanks mate!

Awesome....pssssst, don't forget to hit the "Like" button for scotty Cool
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#6
(10-Jul-2016, 11:24 AM)BigglesFPV Wrote: Awesome....pssssst, don't forget to hit the "Like" button for scotty Cool

Yeah...there are valuable prizes at stake!!  Big Grin
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#7
The real problem when printing in flexible materials is the way the filament is feed into the hot end. You'll need a direct drive extruder where the hobbed gear is right at the entrance of the hot end. Imagine trying to feed a length of rope through a narrow tube. The rope will keep bunching up on you unless you push right at the hole. If that makes since.
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[-] The following 1 user Likes Trollhammered's post:
  • Oscar
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#8
Here is my experience of printing TPU on my Kossel mini.. I don't intend to parrot what others have said here but in the course of explanation I undoubtably will. The feed into and out of my extruder needed modifying, there is no way it will retract with out the back pressure from the long bowden tubing causing it to kink and jam. So unless you have a short filament path out of your extruder then you may run into similar conditions. A quick search should show a few fixes for this. 

Printing temperatiures will no doubt vary between filament sources, mine was happy at the low end of recommended 210-240c. I have an E3Dv6 and it handles deposition really well but with TPU only at low low speeds on my setup, around 10mm/s to be very safe to around 20mm/s pushing it.

One thing that threw me was cooling, I saw many guidelines stating that cooling TPU was a bad idea, maybe with a delta printer specifically this was the case for most users however, with my setup a lot of cooling worked wonders, setting the TPU before it glooped but slowly enough to let it adhere to the bed and previous layers.

The bed temperature was a surprise, 30-35c was fine with TPU in my experiments, much more than that and the heat build up in the print was becoming an issue early on in the printed part.

That just about covers my experiences of TPU with my Kossel Delta, its an awsome material, I have made all manner of flexi mounts, rubberised guards and cam mounts, it is uber durable.

Hope this helps!

Patrick.
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#9
(13-Jul-2016, 05:06 PM)Patrick Wrote: Here is my experience of printing TPU on my Kossel mini.. I don't intend to parrot what others have said here but in the course of explanation I undoubtably will. The feed into and out of my extruder needed modifying, there is no way it will retract with out the back pressure from the long bowden tubing causing it to kink and jam. So unless you have a short filament path out of your extruder then you may run into similar conditions. A quick search should show a few fixes for this. 

Printing temperatiures will no doubt vary between filament sources, mine was happy at the low end of recommended 210-240c. I have an E3Dv6 and it handles deposition really well but with TPU only at low low speeds on my setup, around 10mm/s to be very safe to around 20mm/s pushing it.

One thing that threw me was cooling, I saw many guidelines stating that cooling TPU was a bad idea, maybe with a delta printer specifically this was the case for most users however, with my setup a lot of cooling worked wonders, setting the TPU before it glooped but slowly enough to let it adhere to the bed and previous layers.

The bed temperature was a surprise, 30-35c was fine with TPU in my experiments, much more than that and the heat build up in the print was becoming an issue early on in the printed part.

That just about covers my experiences of TPU with my Kossel Delta, its an awsome material, I have made all manner of flexi mounts, rubberised guards and cam mounts, it is uber durable.

Hope this helps!

Patrick.

good point about the print speed! also don't use a nozzle smaller than .5mm
The trees are all out to get me
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#10
(13-Jul-2016, 05:47 PM)Trollhammered Wrote: good point about the print speed! also don't use a nozzle smaller than .5mm

I forgot to mention my nozzle, it's fairly 'stock' in that its a 0.4mm and I managed to get away with it.. like a lot of new to me filaments it was more time experimenting and failed prints than actually printing finished parts.. such is...
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